Book of Exodus 16,2-4.12-15. The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, "Would that we had died at the LORD'S hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!" Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will now rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion; thus will I test them, to see whether they follow my instructions or not. "I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God." In the evening quail came up and covered the camp. In the morning a dew lay all about the camp, and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground. On seeing it, the Israelites asked one another, "What is this?" for they did not know what it was. But Moses told them, "This is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat."
Psalms 78(77) 3.4bc.23-24.25.54. What we have heard and know, And what our fathers have declared to us, we will declare to the generation to come The glorious deeds of the LORD and his strength.
He commanded the skies above and the doors of heaven he opened; He rained manna upon them for food and gave them heavenly bread.
Man ate the bread of angels, food he sent them in abundance. And he brought them to his holy land, To the mountains his right hand had won.
Letter to the Ephesians 4,17.20-24. So I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds; That is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint John 6,24-35.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?" Jesus answered them and said, "Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal." So they said to him, "What can we do to accomplish the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent." So they said to him, "What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" So Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." So they said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always." Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."
ANGELUS 1st August 2021 Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno!
The initial scene of the Gospel in today’s liturgy (see Jn 6,24-35) shows us some boats moving towards Capernaum: the crowd is going to look for Jesus. We might think that this is a very good thing, yet the Gospel teaches us that it is not enough to seek God; we must also ask why we are seeking him. Indeed, Jesus says: “You seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (v. 26). The people, in fact, had witnessed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, but they had not grasped the meaning of that gesture: they stopped at the external miracle, they stopped at the material bread: there only, without going beyond, to the meaning of this.
Here then is a first question we can ask ourselves: why do we seek the Lord? Why do I seek the Lord? What are the motivations for my faith, for our faith? We need to discern this, because among the many temptations we encounter in life, among the many temptations there is one that we might call idolatrous temptation. It is the one that drives us to seek God for our own use, to solve problems, to have thanks to Him what we cannot obtain on our own, for our interests. But in this way faith remains superficial and even, if I may say so, faith remains miraculous: we look for God to feed us and then forget about Him when we are satiated. At the centre of this immature faith is not God, but our own needs. I think of our interests, many things … It is right to present our needs to God's heart, but the Lord, who acts far beyond our expectations, wishes to live with us first of all in a relationship of love. And true love is disinterested, it is free: one does not love to receive a favour in return! This is self-interest; and very often in life we are motivated by self-interest.
A second question that the crowd asks Jesus can help us: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (v. 28). It is as if the people, provoked by Jesus, were saying: “How can we purify our search for God? How do we go from a magical faith, which thinks only of our own needs, to a faith that pleases God?” And Jesus shows the way: He answers that the work of God is to welcome the One whom the Father has sent, that is, welcoming Himself, Jesus. It is not adding religious practices or observing special precepts; it is welcoming Jesus, it is welcoming Him into our lives, living a story of love with Jesus. It is He who will purify our faith. We are not able to do this on our own. But the Lord wants a loving relationship with us: before the things we receive and do, there is Him to love. There is a relationship with Him that goes beyond the logic of interest and calculation.
This applies to God, but it also applies to our human and social relationships: when we seek first and foremost the satisfaction of our needs, we risk using people and exploiting situations for our own ends. How many times have we heard it said of someone; “But he uses people and then forgets about them”? Using people for one’s own gain: this is bad. And a society that puts interests instead of people at its centre is a society that does not generate life. The Gospel’s invitation is this: rather than being concerned only with the material bread that feeds us, let us welcome Jesus as the bread of life and, starting out from our friendship with Him, learn to love each other. Freely and without calculation. Love given freely and without calculation, without using people, freely, with generosity, with magnanimity.
Let us now pray to the Holy Virgin, She who lived the most beautiful story of love with God, that she may give us the grace to open ourselves to the encounter with her Son.
Saint John-Paul II « Ecclesia de Eucharistia » The Church draws her life from the Eucharist. This truth does not simply express a daily experience of faith, but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of the Church. In a variety of ways she joyfully experiences the constant fulfilment of the promise: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20), but in the Holy Eucharist, through the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, she rejoices in this presence with unique intensity. Ever since Pentecost, when the Church, the People of the New Covenant, began her pilgrim journey towards her heavenly homeland, the Divine Sacrament has continued to mark the passing of her days, filling them with confident hope.
The Second Vatican Council rightly proclaimed that the Eucharistic sacrifice is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (LG 11). “For the most holy Eucharist contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our passover and living bread (1Cor 5,7; Jn 6,51). Through his own flesh, now made living and life-giving by the Holy Spirit, he offers life to men” (Vatican II PO 5). Consequently the gaze of the Church is constantly turned to her Lord, present in the Sacrament of the Altar, in which she discovers the full manifestation of his boundless love.
FAUSTI - Jesus is man, how can he be of divine origin? How come he calls God: "My Father" and promises men the life of God? How can a man become equal to God? It is the mystery of Jesus. He is flesh, like all of us. But it is the Word, become flesh, the Son of God who became Son of man, inevitable scandal so that every son of man becomes Son of God. Jesus reaffirms that accepting Him is a gift from the Father, his work par excellence. He draws every man to the Son so that he may become a son. This attraction of the Father, even if mysterious, is innate in man, precisely because he is his son: is expressed in the many requests for meaning that each one makes. We are all directly instructed by God, disciples of the inner voice that bears witness to the Word, the true light that enlightens every man. We are "theodidact". trained by God, He acts in the heart of every man, drawing him towards light and life, towards the Son in whom he gives himself to us as a Father. If before there was the law, written on boards of stone, now God Himself writes His Word in our hearts, putting in us a new heart, full of His love. Bread recalls the Word of God, the beginning of life. The true bread is Jesus, the Word become flesh. Manna is the food of Exodus. "Your fathers" ate of it, but did not reach the promised land (Ps 95:8); they failed on the way and did not obtain eternal life, because they did not listen to the Lord. Manna came from heaven, but only in the past; moreover, whoever ate it did not obtain life. The Bread of which Jesus speaks instead "descends" now from heaven, to the present, and whoever eats it, doesn't die. We pass from the Bread, which recalls the gift of manna, to the Flesh, which recalls the sacrifice of the Lamb. These are allusions to Exodus and Easter. The Bread that Jesus will give, when His hour has come, is His Flesh: His Body given for us. It is a foreboding of the Passion and its fruit. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, becoming, in his sacrifice, the source of life and blessing for all. The flesh of Jesus, his humanity offered on the cross as a total gift of love, is the Epiphany of that God that no one has ever seen. In him the Word has become Flesh so that the flesh itself becomes the Word, the account of God, the presence of His Spirit that animates the world.
Book of Exodus
RispondiElimina16,2-4.12-15.
The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
The Israelites said to them, "Would that we had died at the LORD'S hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!"
Then the LORD said to Moses, "I will now rain down bread from heaven for you. Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion; thus will I test them, to see whether they follow my instructions or not.
"I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them: In the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, so that you may know that I, the LORD, am your God."
In the evening quail came up and covered the camp. In the morning a dew lay all about the camp,
and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoarfrost on the ground.
On seeing it, the Israelites asked one another, "What is this?" for they did not know what it was. But Moses told them, "This is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat."
Psalms 78(77)
3.4bc.23-24.25.54.
What we have heard and know,
And what our fathers have declared to us,
we will declare to the generation to come
The glorious deeds of the LORD and his strength.
He commanded the skies above
and the doors of heaven he opened;
He rained manna upon them for food
and gave them heavenly bread.
Man ate the bread of angels,
food he sent them in abundance.
And he brought them to his holy land,
To the mountains his right hand had won.
Letter to the
Ephesians 4,17.20-24.
So I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds;
That is not how you learned Christ,
assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus,
that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires,
and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self, created in God's way in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ
according to Saint John 6,24-35.
When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
And when they found him across the sea they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you get here?"
Jesus answered them and said, "Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal."
So they said to him, "What can we do to accomplish the works of God?"
Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent."
So they said to him, "What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do?
Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"
So Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
So they said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst."
POPE FRANCIS
RispondiEliminaANGELUS 1st August 2021
Dear brothers and sisters, buongiorno!
The initial scene of the Gospel in today’s liturgy (see Jn 6,24-35) shows us some boats moving towards Capernaum: the crowd is going to look for Jesus. We might think that this is a very good thing, yet the Gospel teaches us that it is not enough to seek God; we must also ask why we are seeking him. Indeed, Jesus says: “You seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves” (v. 26). The people, in fact, had witnessed the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves, but they had not grasped the meaning of that gesture: they stopped at the external miracle, they stopped at the material bread: there only, without going beyond, to the meaning of this.
Here then is a first question we can ask ourselves: why do we seek the Lord? Why do I seek the Lord? What are the motivations for my faith, for our faith? We need to discern this, because among the many temptations we encounter in life, among the many temptations there is one that we might call idolatrous temptation. It is the one that drives us to seek God for our own use, to solve problems, to have thanks to Him what we cannot obtain on our own, for our interests. But in this way faith remains superficial and even, if I may say so, faith remains miraculous: we look for God to feed us and then forget about Him when we are satiated. At the centre of this immature faith is not God, but our own needs. I think of our interests, many things … It is right to present our needs to God's heart, but the Lord, who acts far beyond our expectations, wishes to live with us first of all in a relationship of love. And true love is disinterested, it is free: one does not love to receive a favour in return! This is self-interest; and very often in life we are motivated by self-interest.
A second question that the crowd asks Jesus can help us: “What must we do, to be doing the works of God?” (v. 28). It is as if the people, provoked by Jesus, were saying: “How can we purify our search for God? How do we go from a magical faith, which thinks only of our own needs, to a faith that pleases God?” And Jesus shows the way: He answers that the work of God is to welcome the One whom the Father has sent, that is, welcoming Himself, Jesus. It is not adding religious practices or observing special precepts; it is welcoming Jesus, it is welcoming Him into our lives, living a story of love with Jesus. It is He who will purify our faith. We are not able to do this on our own. But the Lord wants a loving relationship with us: before the things we receive and do, there is Him to love. There is a relationship with Him that goes beyond the logic of interest and calculation.
This applies to God, but it also applies to our human and social relationships: when we seek first and foremost the satisfaction of our needs, we risk using people and exploiting situations for our own ends. How many times have we heard it said of someone; “But he uses people and then forgets about them”? Using people for one’s own gain: this is bad. And a society that puts interests instead of people at its centre is a society that does not generate life. The Gospel’s invitation is this: rather than being concerned only with the material bread that feeds us, let us welcome Jesus as the bread of life and, starting out from our friendship with Him, learn to love each other. Freely and without calculation. Love given freely and without calculation, without using people, freely, with generosity, with magnanimity.
Let us now pray to the Holy Virgin, She who lived the most beautiful story of love with God, that she may give us the grace to open ourselves to the encounter with her Son.
Saint John-Paul II
RispondiElimina« Ecclesia de Eucharistia »
The Church draws her life from the Eucharist. This truth does not simply express a daily experience of faith, but recapitulates the heart of the mystery of the Church. In a variety of ways she joyfully experiences the constant fulfilment of the promise: “Lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Mt 28:20), but in the Holy Eucharist, through the changing of bread and wine into the body and blood of the Lord, she rejoices in this presence with unique intensity. Ever since Pentecost, when the Church, the People of the New Covenant, began her pilgrim journey towards her heavenly homeland, the Divine Sacrament has continued to mark the passing of her days, filling them with confident hope.
The Second Vatican Council rightly proclaimed that the Eucharistic sacrifice is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (LG 11). “For the most holy Eucharist contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth: Christ himself, our passover and living bread (1Cor 5,7; Jn 6,51). Through his own flesh, now made living and life-giving by the Holy Spirit, he offers life to men” (Vatican II PO 5). Consequently the gaze of the Church is constantly turned to her Lord, present in the Sacrament of the Altar, in which she discovers the full manifestation of his boundless love.
FAUSTI - Jesus is man, how can he be of divine origin? How come he calls God: "My Father" and promises men the life of God? How can a man become equal to God? It is the mystery of Jesus.
RispondiEliminaHe is flesh, like all of us.
But it is the Word, become flesh, the Son of God who became Son of man, inevitable scandal so that every son of man becomes Son of God. Jesus reaffirms that accepting Him is a gift from the Father, his work par excellence.
He draws every man to the Son so that he may become a son.
This attraction of the Father, even if mysterious, is innate in man, precisely because he is his son:
is expressed in the many requests for meaning that each one makes. We are all directly instructed by God, disciples of the inner voice that bears witness to the Word, the true light that enlightens every man.
We are "theodidact". trained by God, He acts in the heart of every man, drawing him towards light and life, towards the Son in whom he gives himself to us as a Father.
If before there was the law, written on boards of stone, now God Himself writes His Word in our hearts, putting in us a new heart, full of His love.
Bread recalls the Word of God, the beginning of life.
The true bread is Jesus, the Word become flesh.
Manna is the food of Exodus. "Your fathers" ate of it, but did not reach the promised land (Ps 95:8); they failed on the way and did not obtain eternal life, because they did not listen to the Lord.
Manna came from heaven, but only in the past; moreover, whoever ate it did not obtain life.
The Bread of which Jesus speaks instead "descends" now from heaven, to the present, and whoever eats it,
doesn't die. We pass from the Bread, which recalls the gift of manna, to the Flesh, which recalls the sacrifice of the Lamb. These are allusions to Exodus and Easter.
The Bread that Jesus will give, when His hour has come, is His Flesh: His Body given for us.
It is a foreboding of the Passion and its fruit.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, becoming, in his sacrifice, the source of life and blessing for all.
The flesh of Jesus, his humanity offered on the cross as a total gift of love, is
the Epiphany of that God that no one has ever seen.
In him the Word has become Flesh so that the flesh itself becomes the Word, the account of God, the presence of His Spirit that animates the
world.